I was just wondering, on reflecting upon what set me personally upon this musical road,
who might have been some of the luminaries (and not-so-luminaries) that had you guys
saying to yourselves, “I want some of that in MY life!”
Not a heavy topic, but I wonder how we settle upon ITM, and some of the “why”s.
(One of my “why”s was, I just HAD to play for dancers.)
So, there it is.
My first ventures into diddly stuff of any kind (i.e. not necessarily Irish) were inspired by Kathryn Tickell and her various band line-ups - and a cassette of Hungarian zither music, from a market stall in Budapest. It was probably De Danann’s ‘The Mist Covered Mountain’ that first drew me towards Irish music.
For me it wasn’t so much who as what that drew me in. I’m in the US and wasn’t around the music very much growing up. In college I inherited a twenty button concertina that was my great grandmothers, who had been an immigrant from Ireland. I learned a couple tunes on it but that was about it. Then I took my first trip to Ireland in 2000 and saw my first session (at the Crane in Galway City), and loved the music so much I became determined to play it. Still working on it! I play the 30 button anglo concertina now and one row melodeon.
The Corrs on Saturday Night Live, a bored evening surfing Ebay, and impulse control problems all conspired to get me into this.
I used to be a rocker through and through (I have the guitars to prove it!), and towards my late teens I started listening to the more mellow side of rock, then leading to guitar-picking singer-songwriters, and from there I started listening to Irish folk singing which led me to buying a CD copy of Planxty’s reunion gig in Vicar St. in 2004. At first I was interested mainly in the songs, but the more I listened to it, the more the sets of tunes grabbed me (especially that Jenny’s Wedding/The Virginia/Garrett Barry’s Reel set). At around the same time, a friend gave me a CD of stuff by Davy Spillane, Altan and the Bothy Band. My first attempts at playing Irish trad was when I bought a whistle and started trying to figure out some of the tunes on that Planxty recording, and Davy Spillane’s Tarbolton set (before I even knew what the Tarbolton set was). I then really got hooked on the Bothy Band and that was probably the kick that really sent me spiralling head first into this obsession 8-odd years ago.
Steve Shaw on the Harmonica.
Boys of the Lough around 1973, then Andy McGann, Paddy Reynolds and lots of Shanachie LPs. It took a long time for me to decide to try to play rather than just listen--still trying!
Dan
The blokes in the pub’.
The judge. Gave me the choice of playing trad or picking up trash on the highway in an orange jumpsuit. Still wondering if I made the right choice…
For years I played highland bagpipes at home and at New Year’s Eve bookings, and guitar in folk clubs. One evening Eddie and Finbar Furey were the guests, and that was me hooked. I remember thinking, *This* is what the pipes are for.
Irish music is like Scottish music with the corsets off.
My grandmothers introduced me, but it was Barney McKenna’s banjo and Luke Kelly’s voice that hooked me.
Terry Bingham, Christy Barry and Yvonne Casey. First session I had ever seen and from that day I decided I wanted to play the concertina. Terry, Christy and Yvonne are still major influences on my playing and the tunes I am learning. I’ll never manage to thank these people enough for what they gave me over the years !
In Ireland, I was growing up with it all around.
But these guy’s, where to blame, for me wanting to go out to play it .
f4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqbEmMIrdOY
Same as Fiddle4, Barney ‘Banjo’ McKenna in particular.
Went from CCR and the Grateful Dead, along with some Disturbed and Audioslave to the Dropkick Murphy’s / The Pogues / The Real McKenzies and such. Started to listen to the Dubliners and the Corries from there, and finally got into the fiddle, and now the Bodhran.
Now I’m starting to feel really, really old. At some point in the far and distant past, I played a lot of Iron Butterfly, Doors and CCR on guitar and organ (inveterate rock and roll days). After that, a few years writing and playing light jazz on guitar (elevator music for yuppies) and then a stint writing and playing contemporary Christian tunes (I can’t sing squat in a hymnal, it’s all out of my key. Write your own music though and you can pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, er.. ears) and then a move to a musically challenged area where someone foolishly asked me to help with a Ceilidh at a senior citizens center and I had to learn some ITM tunes. That meant buying a cheap mandolin to go along with the guitar. I found I didn’t know diddly but I could certainly learn to play diddly so now I am madly “diddling” about. To date, my repertoire is only about 40+ tunes which isn’t great for three years effort but I haven’t stopped writing and singing Christian, light jazz, western gunfighter ballads as well as learning the ITM stuff on mandolin, tenor banjo, bouzouki and hammered dulcimer so parsing out time for everything is difficult. ITM is fun stuff. Unfortunately, there are very few players in my area so learning anything requires reading dots and then throwing them away in favor of memory and a lot of leaning on YouTube for good influences (fingers crossed). But as to inspiration, sadly, no particular individuals or groups, just a sudden infusion of melodies for that ceilidh which set my musical interest in a new and unexpected direction.
Well, my dad introduced me to planxty (and people bands like fairport convention, steeleye span, malicorne etc…). He also played the occasional tune, even if he was more about singing (at least while I was growing up). In the meantime we’d occasionally get albums like ‘if the cap fits’ or stuff by seamus begley or de dannan from various relies (especially the Irish ones.) But I suppose it was a Martin Hayes album, and to a lesser extent an seo by ragus that really got me into the trad.
Steeleye Span and the Bothy Band. That was 39 years ago. I tried their stuff on piano and it never seemed to work. Got married to a lady who sings and plays folk guitar.. She wanted me to play with her. I picked hammer dulcimer so now I have a good instrument to play Irish trad on.
Summer 04, hearing Brendan Power at the Broadstairs Folk Festival playing with a young chap called Tim Edey on guitar. They were under a gazebo by a pub on the front and it poured with rain, we got soaked but it was magic. I found a weekly session to visit, thanks to this site, and am still playing with those same people now, ten years later.
Altan cd’s from the library.
In my earliest childhood, Delia Murphy; later on, Planxty, The Chieftains, and The Boys of the Lough.
A lot of people actually, but I doubt you’ve ever heard of any of them…well maybe a few thanks to some very fortunate circumstances. As time has passed I’ve come to recognize some of the names known to everybody. Still the first and to this day, the most powerful, influences on me have come from the many, many talented men and women who play together, in good company, when and where they can.
In the Seventies I went out on St. Patrick’s to get drunk. I heard an Uilleann piper surrounded by a herd of aspiring young musicians play with verve and energy. I was gob-smacked. For years my ‘fix’ was Fionna Ritchie and the ’Thistle & Shamrock". Then came The Chieftains, Boys of the Lough, the Bothy Band. . .the addiction was fully set in. Now, Lord help me, I’m trying to play the music. . . .
Grew up on my father’s Chieftains and Natalie MacMaster albums, stalwart companions on road trips.
Then later, in college, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
It was a science fiction writing workshop that got me involved with The Music. You see, the workshop was held in the Boston area, and during my drive, I was exposed to a show on WGBH called the Celtic Sojourn, hosted by Brian O’Donovan. I heard much I liked, and was inspired to see The Battlefield Band, and bought myself a whistle. Then my wife and I went to see Solas, and she bought a fiddle, and the rest is history…
As a punk rock fan in college, Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly were fun bands and I particularly liked the tunes, except I started to feel like it would be better without all the singing and drums and stuff. Totally is! Then heard some sessions in pubs, made the connection, and started checking out Altan, Kevin Burke, Liz Carroll, and was hooked.
Oh, and Thistle and Shamrock was super important!
Planxty, then Kevin Griffin…
…Brian O’Donovan, too.
Jethro Tull, on to the Bothy Band, on to Altan and The Chieftains and The Tannahill Weavers.
In chronological order (from February to July 1991):
The Pogues (to be more exact, the jig-like melody the played as a solo in Bottle of Smoke)
The Chieftains (the first time I heard Irish)
Davy Spillane (background music to a stop-motion animated TV series for children; to this day, I don’t know the name of it - any ideas?)
Hearing Gerry ‘fiddle’ O’Connor live in concert and then his Journeyman
album got me motivated to put serious effort into it. I knew about Trad
years earlier but didn’t think it was meant for me.
Cor, my mum and dad used to play a scratchy old Delia Murphy record. I remembered Three Lovely Lasses From Bannion and the Spinning Wheel Song. Ciaran Mac Mathuna often played her songs on his RTE Sunday morning show. I bought the CD compilation a few years ago!
As for other influences, ’twas early Planxty. Raggle Taggle Gypsy set me brain alight the first time I heard it. And, as yhaalhouse says, the blokes in the pub!
And thank you, Richard.
My interest in acoustic music came from listening to Norman and Nancy Blake and I got into fiddle tunes, and then John Carty came to Melbourne so I got into Irish music. Previous to that I’d studied jazz guitar.
Dermot O’ Brien’s music meant a lot to me. I had all his records, and still have them. He was so good, I just wanted to copy him. He also went into different areas of music, which impressed me.
I started listening to the Pogues in the early 1990’s, then the Dubliners and Chieftains, but it was on my first trip to Ireland in 1995 when I walked in to Taffees pub in Shop street, Galway and almost stumbled over the musicians in the corner playing I really was sold! I travelled all by my self and found a seat by the fire and listened without a word the rest of the evening in awe. I clearly remember a bearded (Barney McKenna copy) guy called Pat and flute player Dessie Adams making a huge impression on me.
Ketil, Norway
I got deeply tired of the loneliness of playing classical guitar in my early twenties, and bought a cheap whistle. I had a book of Irish tunes from a few years spent playing violin at primary school, and started to learn them, and read about ITM, and developed a profound enjoyment in the creative ornamentation of tunes. Then I went back to the guitar, and learnt to improvise, and was happy for a while.
Later, I started going to the Cambridge Folk festival, and was inspired by many fine traditional players of all kinds, but Brian McNeill stands out as one example - an amazing musician and teacher (I went to a fiddle tutorial ran by him). I bought a new fiddle, and started practicising. ITM then became a natural direction for me to go, as most of the sessions nearby to me are Irish, though my repertoire is still small and needs developing.
I’m also learning Scottish (principally Shetlands) fiddle music, as there is a session near me that focuses on this.
My Grandfather was in his seventies when I was born and he played a mean trad fiddle. As a young man he had played all over Ireland in the days before partition, and afterwards at dances and celebrations when this type of music was the only music available for country folk… long before rock music or pop. He taught me that traditional music was the music of all traditions in Northern Ireland and that it transcends all political or religious boundaries, and I’ve tried to follow his example ever since. I still think of him every time I hear the Mason’s Apron or Boys of the Blue Hill.
Noel Hill - New Irish Concertina. I wanted to play my harmonicas like that.
Unfortunately not growing up in Ireland or London or Boston I didn’t have any Irish music around me growing up.
In the early 1970s I was a kid living in a small town in the middle of a desert- literally, surrounded by sand dunes and coyotes and roadrunners and date palms. (The Coachella Valley… look it up.)
But my dad had wide musical tastes and we had records (yes big round black things) of Bach and Strauss and many other things including a wonderful album of Pipe Major John MacLellan which got me hooked on the Highland pipes. So my dad ordered me a Practice Chanter through the post and I sat around doodling on that, aided by The College Of Piping Tutor.
On Sunday mornings there was a TV show that featured a different sort of music each week. One week was E Power Biggs playing Bach on the pipe organ, one week was The Canadian Brass. Then one Sunday morning there was a strange little Baroque ensemble. I’d seen these before. There were two violins and a wooden flute and a harpsichord… but this group was different! There was a guy playing some sort of, as I thought, Renaissance percussion instrument, and another guy playing what sounded like a Renaissance shawm… but it wasn’t! It was in fact a small sweet-sounding bagpipe. Only being familiar with Highland pipes, I was amazed by the way this strange Baroque or Renaissance (I wasn’t sure what to make of it all) bagpipe blended so beautifully with the rest of the ensemble.
The group was The Chieftans, and I was hooked!
1970s - John Peel on the BBC playing Planxty alongside the Damned! … then Andy Irvine, Davy Sillane etc. bringing back some wild music from the Balkans.
Asher Gray playing flute and whistle in a pub in Milwaukee.
“Noel Hill - New Irish Concertina. I wanted to play my harmonicas like that.”
Good one, Joel. His free ornamentation on that album was an inspiration for me too.
I was given a whistle by a friend who studied in Ireland, started listening to ‘Thistle and Shamrock’, and half-learned a handful of tunes. A couple of years later, I went to a concert by Cherish the Ladies (w/Fr. Charlie Coen) and thought “I have to learn to play this!” So here we are, 12 or so years later.
Stay with the diddly, I will stick with Irish Music
Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Dubliners (as with Fiddle4!) then one Sunday night in 1967 or 8 I was taken to Mark’s Bar in Dundalk where I first heard live ITM. Hooked for ever! If my Mum had known where I was she would have killed me stone dead - a Presbyterian! in a pub on a Sunday! in the Republic! WITH CATHOLICS ! LISTENING IRISH TRADITIONAL MUSIC ! And if she’d known it was a Church of Ireland curate who brought me there she’d have had us burned at the stake!
Loved the songs since I was a boy. Hearing John Sheahan and Barney McKenna playing reels between the songs on Dubliners records first inspired me to play the tunes.
Planxty and the Bothy Band for me, especially the pipers Paddy Keenan and Liam O’Flynn. Mary Bergin was a real inspiration for me to take up whistle playing.
Johnny Handle of the High Level Ranters playing melodeon at a folk club in Leeds 48 years ago. I said to myself “I want to do that” and so that together with picking up a friends melodeon, who had trouble playing it, and discovering I could play a song tune on it without any problem first time, sold the idea of buying one a.s.a.p.
Always loved the Pogues, the Chieftains, the Waterboys, etc, since college when I first heard them, and lots of Irish and Cape Breton music, too. I’ve always been a late bloomer so it took me a while to realize I really wanted to play the fiddle, and then when I saw the Waterboys live last year for the first time and saw Steve Wickham play, that’s when I knew fiddling is what I should do. In January I’ll have been playing for one year, and even though I’ve gone through the typical fledgling “why am I not a genius at this RIGHT NOW?” crap, I’m amazed that 10 months in, I can play several tunes and they actually sound good!
No one, I decided to put music back into my life, and took up fiddle, after doing some flute on Australian bush tunes, which I thought adequate given meager talent, and all I wanted was a hobby. Soon moved on to Irish tunes as I met the violin guys in the city at the violin repair shop. 25 years later still diddling and trying to remember them without the dots, someone forgot to tell me that there are a huge number of tunes out there and a memory helps. Sort of sticks to you like some ancestral spiritual habit that can’t be ignored. Weird. Can’t explain it. It is just there. Might as well enjoy it. Love a good session.
Going back to mine, and their earlier days, my inspiration to sit up, listen, and take notice were both the Chieftains and the Fureys in equal measure but particularly Barney & Finbar’s banjo playing.
To decide to buy one of each and take up playing banjo & mandolin for myself (playing is still nothing to write home about mind), has to be courtesy of Mick Moloney, then of the Johnstons, who I’d first heard on some borrowed vinyl. I was completely blown away by his playing on his Transatlantic album“We Have Met Together” in 1973, and most of his recordings ever since. The rest, as they say is history.
Whilst I continue to dip into all genres of music, I never stray too far from traditional Irish. Will continue to be inspired by so many good banjo players on both sides of the atlantic and around the world, too numerous to mention here, but they know who they are, thanks to you all!
Early Chieftains, Planxty
For me, it was Aly Bain as a member of the 4 pc. group “The Boys of the Lough” in Mar. of ’75
at Kutztown State in Pennsylvania. I went ape for Celtic trad. immediately. And I still enjoy his work with Phil Cunningham, Jerry Douglas, Ale Moeller and anyone else he chooses to team up with.
I played clarinet & recorder as a kid, and started learning classical guitar as a teen. Through them, I discovered early music (medieval, etc.) on my own, and loved modal tunes, which led me to Appalachian stuff.
Then a new friend gave me a Chieftain’s 5 album - genuine vinyl - and said “This is weird. You might like it.” And I did, very much! Then another friend introduced me to Planxty and The Bothy Band and I was hooked. That second friend gave me a Generation whistle, too, so that sunk the hook in deeper.
My 4-year-old daughter decided she wanted to play violin, and I had the job of taking her to her lesson. I lasted two lessons before renting a violin. Within a year, I had a book of fiddle tunes so we could have some fun with the instrument.
Then I went to a jam session - songs and such - where it was all guitars. They needed someone to play melody, and I had the fiddle and whistle. All that flowed into true Irish trad sessions. It’s been a wonderful journey.
I was a highland piper who listened a bit to Planxty and Pentangle but never imagined that playing trad was for me, until I was invited into the local session scene by this man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md9lGlcctsk&index=3&list=PL38A3926D2BDD6FE8
While I had long listened to Thistle and Shamrock, I always assumed only people in Ireland played Irish music (I played jazz). Then walking out of an improv comedy club I heard a fiddle playing a jig and was drawn into the pub. It was a guy from St. Paul, Minnesotta - Tom Dahill. That’s all it took. Went out and bought a tin whistle and it has been downhill ever since.
in the late ‘60s I was a total blues fanatic and I ’d never heard anything in a folk club to remotely
interest me til one night by chance I went to see 2 guys called Carthy and Swarbrick - ok they’re English
but back in those days anyone playing jigs and reels were rarer than hen’s teeth! About the same time I bought
an lp by Dave and Toni Arthur of magical/pagan songs and tunes ‘Hearken to the Witches Rune’ which included ‘King of the Fairies’ played by Kevin Burke. It was downhill all the way after that…………….
Great stories, and thank you all for sharing.
As varied as the people themselves, naturally.
I love how many names and bands from my own
youth came up.
My story ---
I had reached my early twenties without being around the trad fever,
although there was a little bit of the ITM there as I was growing up.
Then, I fell into social circle where, at a party one day, some lads began singing
a bunch of their faves from the Dubliners, Clancys, Rovers, etc.
Thus infected, I started learning songs and such by ear, but was inspired to try
the whistle from listening to Tommy Makem with the Clancys. Then a friend
played a Chieftains album track for me, “Round The House And Mind The Dresser”,
a set of Kerry slides, and my doom was sealed. (Meeting Johnny Cunningham and
Kevin Burke back then did not hurt, either.)
But I needed a teacher, as opposed to finding all my own way, to get started on the ceili music,
so I asked around, and found an old man was teaching children in the back room of a
local pub. Next thing I know, I am sitting there weekly, at age 26 or so, odd man in a row of 6-12 year olds,
learning “Twinkle Twinkle” and “Sean South”. (and jealously wishing I had those kids “chops”!)
Eventually, though, my teacher started me on fiddle, then when I had a few tunes I tried my luck
at some very friendly supportive sessions, and now, “here I am amongst you”.
🙂
